mario and the return of wart is a hack that isn't particularly enjoyable. supposedly it's about the return of wart but it has no references to that other than the title and the opening, which involves a koopa asks mario to fight wart, but then you end up fighting standard mario enemies like goombas and koopas anyway instead of enemies you'd except like shy guys and snifits. but hey it has kremlings i guess so now it's got more soul than that crappy game tropical freeze

nothing about this hack really shines truth be told, it ends up feeling very rushed and incomplete despite being in the works for at least nine months. the level design's bad, the art style is distractingly inconsistent and there's barely any content to begin with

Pros

nice art in places

Cons

bad level designinconsistent art stylesevere lack of polishwhere the heck are the smb2 enemiesdoesn't even tell you when it's ended

Impressions

Gameplay3 / 10

it has the original smw physics and camera which are god tier, but the level design is awful because it just doesn't go anywhere. it's like if a normal mario level was a short story, where you got a gimmick you build a level around and you make it increasingly harder by throwing twists at the player to keep it fresh, but this hack doesn't do any of that. instead it feels like all the levels are pointless because they have no real theming or even build up making every obstacle feel like it was just randomly thrown at you. a good example was the level "fuzzy freakout" which, despite what the name might make you think, only had like 5 fuzzies total compared to like 8 or 10 chucks and in the end was practically a straight line that only took more than 30 seconds to beat because it had slow autoscrolling

Graphics3 / 10

throws art at you from all kinds of sources, super mario land 2, smb3 (nes), super mario world, yoshi's island, and some custom graphics that look way more advanced than anything else in the game. the custom art is good but it stands out so much from everything and there are quite a few graphical issues, so the final product ends up being ugly and distracting

Sound7 / 10

wasn't bad

Replay1 / 10

there's only like 3 complete levels out of 5 available ones. one ends right after the midway point, one outright tells you to go back to the overworld and what's there just isn't very good, plus the hack feels really unpolished in general, it doesn't even tell you when it's ended so I had to open the hack in lunar magic just to confirm if I had completed it

Final Words

mario and the return of wart is a mediocre hack with only a few levels, all of which aren't particularly good, with a really distracting and inconsistent art style, a severe polish and no real effort to even tie wart into the game which could at least make it stand out. as it stands right now, i've played worse hacks, but i certainly wouldn't boot this one up for another go